Interesting Black Friday Links to Share

Wanted to show a little link love to some people who have written some really great stuff recently.

First off, Dr. Pauly (don’t call him Paul) has a bit of a rant about PokerStars stiffing him. Seems he received a form letter saying that affiliates will not be paid on US players they sent in the months prior. So, if I’m reading the letter correctly, if I sent a player in Jan and he met all of the qualification requirements for me to get paid in early April, Stars is saying, “F-U, we’re not paying because we can’t make any more money off this guy because he’s in the US but keep sending us non-US players, Thanks!”

The recurring theme in all of this is that Stars and Tilt became either too arrogant or too greedy for their own good. Their “alleged” willingness to engage in all sorts of shady processing deals in order to save a few bucks on processing fees is what brought them down. The DOJ has not gone after any of the US facing card rooms (other than UB and Absolute who are accused of the same crimes).

In light of what we know now about the indictments I have such a hard time not laughing when reading Full Tilt’s initial response:

Dublin Ireland (April 15, 2011) – Full Tilt Poker is saddened by today’s charges against its CEO Raymond Bitar and offers its full support to Mr. Bitar and Nelson Burtnick.

Online poker is a game of skill enjoyed by tens of millions of people in the United States and across the world. And, Full Tilt Poker remains as committed as ever to preserving the rights of those players to play the game they love online.

Mr. Bitar and Full Tilt Poker believe online poker is legal – a position also taken by some of the best legal minds in the United States. Full Tilt Poker is, and has always been committed to preserving the integrity of the game and abiding by the law.

“I am surprised and disappointed by the government’s decision to bring these charges. I look forward to Mr. Burtnick’s and my exoneration”, said Mr. Bitar.

Unfortunately, as a result of this action, Full Tilt Poker has decided that it must suspend “real money” play in the United States until this case is resolved. However, Full Tilt Poker will continue to provide peer-to-peer online poker services outside of the United States.

Bill Rini

Bill Rini has been working in the online poker industry since 2004. He was a product manager for poker at Full Tilt and was the poker room manager at PartyPoker. Currently, Bill is the Head of Online Poker for WSOP.
Bill has been blogging about online poker since 2003 and is considered one of the leading authorities on the online poker industry.
"I like What Bill Rini said in his blog" - Doyle Brunson
"In other news, we had Bill Rini write an absolutely home run blog." Daniel Negreanu
"Industry insider Bill Rini has one of the most popular blogs in poker, with thousands of subscribers and fans regularly coming back for his universally respected insight into the industry" - Barry Carter (News editor for PokerStrategy, Co-Author: The Mental Game of Poker)

Greatest Hits From Bill’s Poker Blog

Proof Online Poker is Rigged One can hardly read any poker forum without running across individuals claiming that this or that site is rigged. Usually they are humiliated with the forum .experts. rudely telling them that the reason they.re losing is because they aren.t good poker players. I.m sad to say that I used to be one of those .experts.. I was one of the doubters until I actually caught one site cheating.

Why Online Poker Is Not Rigged In this post I will attempt to address every argument I.ve ever heard regarding online poker being rigged. Mind you, I do work for a company that develops online poker software but my motivation is not to convince people to trust *my* employer.s software, rather it is to have a central place where people can point misinformed message board and blog posters who think somebody is pulling something on them.

Motivations For Rigging Online Poker I.m not sure whether it.s funny or sad that even after my post on why online poker is not rigged, I still get people emailing me trying to convince me otherwise. The funny/sad part is that despite the fact that I.ve all but called people who make that claim without hand histories or other empirical evidence idiots I continue to receive 1 . 5 emails a week telling me some bad beat story and QED, online poker is rigged. So with that in mind, I.m going to expound a bit on some new points as well as clarify previously made points.

PokerBot Pro - Another Online Poker Scam Pauly emailed me this link the other day and I just can.t help calling the guy on his bullshit. He's certainly not the first person to make such absurd claims but he happened to be the one I decided to pick on.

Online Poker Tells Many players will tell you that online poker tells either don.t exist or are difficult to judge. That's a load. All the online pros know the tells but it's some sort of unspoken rule never to let others in on it. Well, that ends right now! I will share with my loyal readers 5 of the top online poker tells that they (and we know who *they* is, don.t we?) don.t want you to know about.

The Wisdom of Bonus Whoring One of the common topics you.ll see mentioned in the poker blogosphere is bonus whoring. Of course, bonus whoring is the act of playing on a particular site in order to take advantage of a reload or some other type of promotional bonus. Many people chase bonuses from site to site and even include bonuses in their monthly win/lose figures. The more I've thought about it though, the more I.m beginning to question the wisdom of bonus whoring.

Seeing The World Through The Eyes of a Fish Have you ever been left scratching your head trying to figure out why your opponent played the hand the way he did? I certainly did so I found a fish and hooked him up to the USB port on my computer and did the same to myself. The results of this experiment are below:

The Ultimate Secret to Winning Poker I'm going to let everyone in on the biggest secret in poker; there is no secret! You can quit looking for that special book, video, website, etc. that.s going to turn your game around and make you into the next Phil Hellmuth Ivey.

About Bill’s Poker Blog

IMPORTANT NOTICE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ON THIS BLOG ARE MY OWN PERSONAL OPINIONS (OR THOSE OF THE GUEST AUTHOR). THEY DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF ANY EMPLOYER OR ORGANIZATION.